Naming of Burlington Limestone

Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science

Volume 37 Annual Issue Article 58

1930

Charles Keyes

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Recommended Citation Keyes, Charles (1930) "Naming of Burlington Limestone," Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science, 37(1), 273-274. Available at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/pias/vol37/iss1/58

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THE CHEMUN"G FORMATION OF IOWA AND WESTERN NEW YORK

A. c. TESTER This paper summarizes the facts as presented in t.he papers by Laudon and Curry and reviews the general interpretations made by previous writers concerning the relationships of the Iowa and New York upper Devonian. A comparison is made of the Kinderhook fauna of Iowa and the fauna of the Deva-Carboniferous beds of southwestern New York and comparative stratigraphic sections of the areas between Iowa and New York are presented. The conclusion is reached that the upper Chemung of New York interfingers with transition beds which are tentatively correlated with the Kinderhook Chattanooga formations, but that later Mississippian rocks were not deposited in southwestern New York.

NAMING OF BURLINGTON LIMESTONE

CHARLES KEYES The main body of the original Early Carbonic Mississippian series of Winchell,1 appears to get its title, not from the dis tinguished paleontologist of l'\ ew York, and one-time State Geologist of Iowa, as is so often asserted, but from a much earlier designation. Nicollet, 2 so early as 1841, clearly denominated the high limestone bluff at the town of Burlington, as the "Burlington section," noting characteristic fossils occurring in the rocks, but not distinguishing the basal shales covered mostly by heavy talus, which 'vV orthen 3 afterwards terms the Kinderhook shales, the beds previously called by Meek, 4 Swallow,5 Hall,6 White & Whit field 7 and others, the Chemung group, after the New York term inology. This is one of the sections from which in 1809, the English

1 Proc. American Philos. Soc., Vol. XI, p. 79, 1869. 2 Rept. Intended to Illus., Map of Hydrog1:aphic Basin of Upper Mississippi River, Sen. Doc., 26th Cong., 2nd Sess., Vol. V, Pt. ii, ="'o. 277, 1841. 3 Illinois Geo!. Surv., Vol. I, p. 43, 1866. 4 Missouri. Geo!. Surv., 1st and 2nd Ann. Repts., Pt. ii, p. 101, 1855. 5 Ibid., p. 176. 6 Geology of Iowa, Vol. I, p. 88, 1858. 7 Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., Vol. VIII, p. 289, 1862. 273 Published by UNI ScholarWorks, 1930 1 Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science, Vol. 37 [1930], No. 1, Art. 58 274 IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE

naturalist, Thomas Nuttall, collected fossils which he regarded as identical with those occurring in the Derbyshire (England) rocks afterwards assigned to the Carbonic. Owen 8 called these rocks the "Encrinital group of Burlington." So the famous crinoid beds are already widely known as the Burlington beds when Hall comes out West. Without mentioning Nicollet's usage of the term, and quoting Encrinital as a synonym, he boldly designates 9 the bluff section the Burlington limestone, as if this were the first time the word had been thought of in a ter ranal sense. But credit of the naming of this formation, its first description, and the enumeration of its characteristic fossils manifestly pro perly belongs to that pioneer Frenchman, Joseph N. Nicollet.

THE CLARINDA OIL PROSPECT

JAMES H. LEES Work has been prosecuted on an oil prospect about six miles south of Clarinda since November of 1928. A part of the record of strata is given in volume XXXIII of the reports of the Iowa Geological Survey. Since the publication of that report the well has been deepened somewhat. A description of the strata pene trated will be given and comparison will be made with the new well at Greenfield to the north and with the oil prospect at Nebraska City to the west.

A LARGE FRAGMENT OF A PROBOSCIDIAN TUSK FOUND NEAR GLENWOOD, IOWA, AND NOTES OF SIMILAR FINDS

PAUL RowE In September, 1929, Mr. Howard Miller showed the writer a partly ·exposed tusk which he thought was a petrified log. It was dug out on October 7th, and found to be 6 feet long, 7-! inches by . 6 inches at the big end, and over 5 inches in diameter at the broken end. It lay in the bed of some tiny glacial or post-glacial stream. Most of it fell to fragments when moved. At a point 1! miles west the author has found 7 proboscidian teeth and some other bones in the present stream bed.

8 U. S. Geo!. Surv. Iowa Wisc. and Minn., p. 91, 1852. 9 American Assoc. Adv. Sci., Vol. X, p. 53, 1856. https://scholarworks.uni.edu/pias/vol37/iss1/58 2